Esther Dyson is president of
EDventure Holdings Inc. (formerly Rosen Research) and editor-in-chief
of its newsletter, RELease 1.0.

I recently discovered
that Apple's Macintosh computer is in fact short skis for the mind.
Let me explain briefly about skiing. The faster
you're skiing, almost out of control, the easier it is to maintain your
balance. What stumps most beginners is their unwillingness to approach
losing control.
In the old days, beginners started on gentle slopes
and gradually built up their confidence and skill until they could
handle the tough stuff. Then, a few years ago, a new approach came into
vogue: the Graduated Learning Method. The idea was to start the user
out with short skis, which are more controllable than the two-meter
monsters favored by the experts. Long skis give more power and strength
to experts who go so fast that the twist of a short ski would have
little impact, but they only get in the way of a novice.
Like short skis, the Macintosh may be a little
limiting for the experts, but it makes computing accessible to a much
larger number of people who are afraid or incapable of using the
traditional methods.
If the Mac is short skis, then ski boots are the
interface. They are what enable you to control and maneuver your skis;
they are what the computer user actually feels, sees and touches. If a
boot is too loose, you can't move it precisely; if it's too tight,
you'll give up in despair, as I almost did.
One Saturday morning not long ago I went to a ski
rental shop in Squaw Valley. The salesman asked me my shoe size and
handed me a pair of battered Nordica boots. Of course, the boots didn't
fit properly. I tightened them to get a firmer grip, but I still had a
hard time getting the skis to do what I wanted. Short they were, but
not well connected to my legs.
If they were a computer, I would have said the
interface was wanting, like a mouse that skips around erratically. If
there's anything worse than being difficult, it's being unpredictable.
Mac, on this score, works very well: all the software that runs on it
follows the same rules. What's more, Mac is comfortable: no aching
ankles, no cold toes ... the boots fit.
I got down the hills, yes, but only slowly, and I
didn't have that much fun doing it. The power of the skis wasn't
accessible to me. I returned the skis and boots, and found another ski
shop. What with better-fitting boots and a friendlier send-off, Sunday
went much better. By the end of the day I was jumping over moguls.
In the same way, the Mac delivers a feeling of
control and safety that encourages people to try new things. With long
skis or a complex computer, you have the feeling that you're operating
or maneuvering something. With short skis or the Mac, you feel that
you're working with an extension of yourself.
Now, it's not fair to end this piece without
mentioning that the GLM method of teaching skiing is controversial-and
that it's a learning, not a using method. Do those short skis make it
so easy that people never graduate to long skis? Do they enable? Or do
they cripple?
One can ask the same questions about the Mac. Yes,
it will invite lots of people to use a computer. But are they really
using a computer? Will people graduate to a "real," difficult computer,
or will they always be stuck at the Mac level, reliant on the Mac's
friendly, comfy-boots interface, its consistent commands and its
overall easiness? Or does it really matter so long as they get what
they want out of their computer?
Here our metaphor begins to break down. Short skis
really don't work as well at high speeds, for good skiers. But that's
not necessarily true of short-ski computers. Currently, the Macintosh
has only limited memory, but that's more of a financial consideration
than a fundamental design problem. There's no reason the Mac can't get
more powerful without losing its essential character. In fact, the
Macintosh uses the power of a high-technology 68000 chip (the same
that's inside many $20,000 computers) to make itself easier. It's
inherently more powerful than the harder-to-use IBM PC, but its power
makes things easier, not tougher, for the user.
Incidentally, when I told Don Estridge, head of the
IBM division that developed the PC, that the Mac was short skis, he
thought for a moment, then said: "Yes, but tall people need long skis."